President Donald Trump’s exclusion of the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One for using “Gulf of Mexico” rather than switching to “Gulf of America” is petty, dictatorial, and wrong.
In other regards, however, the absurd spat over the gulf supports Oscar Wilde’s observation that the truth is never pure and rarely simple.
The Associated Press says it uses “Gulf of Mexico” because that’s been the name for 400 years and its continued use avoids confusion. But the organization long ago polluted its news writing with leftist assumptions, and it is difficult to believe it is not being recalcitrant as an act of political resistance.
The federal Board on Geographic Names has changed the gulf’s name. In the Associated Press’s home country, the body of water is the Gulf of America. And the Associated Press is revealingly inconsistent in its application of the principle that it should use widely accepted terms so readers aren’t confused.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on reciprocal tariffs in the Oval Office at the White House on February 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Take, for example, its treatment of stories about transgender issues. For rather longer than 400 years, since the advent of the English language, biological men have been referred to in the third person as “he” and “him,” but the Associated Press switched to the modish falsehoods of “she” and “her.” Its resultant stories are thoroughly confusing, not to mention illiterate.
To describe treatments that may involve surgical or chemical castration, it also uses the term “gender-affirming care,” which is preferred by those whose agenda is to bend genders. Why does the Associated Press do this? Because it wants to help those shoving our culture to the left, and it knows ideas follow language.
The Associated Press style guide says the policy is based on usage by leading medical groups such as the American Medical Association. So, here’s what we know: The Associated Press will gloss the truth as desired by politically corrupted medical groups but won’t use the correct official term, “Gulf of America,” because — let’s be honest — it dislikes the president who ordered the name changed.
None of this is to suggest that the name change to “Gulf of America” is inherently desirable. It isn’t. It does not add to American prestige — its greatness — but diminishes it. “Gulf of Mexico,” like the “Gulf of Alaska,” makes plain that these bodies of water are ancillary to the continent dominated by the United States. “Gulf of America” shrinks America to the proportions of that marginal body of water.
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Making this point objects only to the effect of the change. But it is also objectionable on principle. As the late conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton noted, we inherit the past and should pass it on undamaged to future generations. That duty includes care of nomenclature. Conservatives should not approve of new names, phrases, and other ideological neologisms being foisted onto our language, just as we should not approve of coup leaders taking over broadcasters and pumping out terms that steep the populace in ideas acceptable to the revolution.
At a more mundane level, but one still guided by conservative instincts, I still prefer Bombay to Mumbai; I traveled in Burma, not Myanmar; and I will always refer to Rome and Paris, not to Roma and Paree.
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Publish date : 2025-02-20 22:05:00
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